Denial of Care: Is This What It Means to Support Our Troops?

By Donna Smith, American SiCKO, communications specialist for the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee

This isn’t such a day of honor for Michael Baranik of Jennings, LA. His nation doesn’t seem very grateful for his service. He is dying. And he is being denied the medical care that could save his life.

Here’s what Michael wrote in as he told his story on the guaranteedhealthcare.org website: “In January 2007, on the worst day of my life, I sat in a doctor's office and was told I had terminal cancer, and then in the next breath he told me my insurance was not good enough to cover reimbursement of the chemotherapy.

“Now I am a retired military veteran, I spent 24 years in the United States Navy, I served my country for 24 years, now my country is giving up on me.”

Many Americans think that veterans always have access to quality healthcare through the Veterans Administration system. Many Americans think that when our leaders espouse loyalty and admiration for our military personnel that it means these men and women are adequately taken care of as the heroes we all know they must be on our behalf when our nation calls. But as Michael tells us, quality care for our service men and women is often not the reality.

“I have no choice of my insurance. I thought my military insurance was good coverage and was accepted by most doctors. What I found out was most doctors are not accepting military insurance. I had to go and beg doctors to give me a chance to live,” Michael wrote.

He had to beg. A 24-year veteran of the United State Navy was left begging for care. Not exactly the picture of honor and glory we paint as we place wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknowns or place flags on every corner. Michael begged.

“I was shocked at the unpatriotic sense these people have. I will never in my life recommend any person join our armed services. Why should they? So they can get sick and be told, sorry, we know you fought for our country, and this is how we repay you,” he said. “It is insane and un-American.”

While it is true that our VA system is leaps and bounds ahead of what millions of uninsured and under-insured Americans can access, veterans’ healthcare is grossly underfunded in this nation, and those service members and veterans who are covered under Tri-Care (and do not receive their healthcare through the VA) often find themselves victim to the same insurance denials that the general population suffers.

Michael kept trying. “Luckily I begged and begged a doctor who said he would only give me seven treatments, because of insurance. Insurance was his primary concern, he even told me, ‘Tri-Care just doesn't cover enough’ ...like I have anything to do with that. This is what I get for serving my country for 24 years. If I had known this when I joined, I would have never joined, I would have left this country, given up my citizenship and lived in a country where they respect the men and women that protect their freedom.”

Wow. On Memorial Day 2008, this is what we gave Michael. We did not give him honor or glory or blessings or peace. We gave him sorrow and regret and longing for compassion.

If our nation had in place single payer, universal health care, Michael would have a chance to live. With access to the treatments that might abate his cancer, Michael would not spend his days feeling as though his sacrifice was dishonored. With adequate healthcare through publicly funded, privately delivered single payer care, all veterans of this nation – and all the citizens they fought to protect -- would enjoy the peace of mind they truly deserve.

HR676, The National Health Insurance Act, now has 90 Congressional co-sponsors who believe that a single payer system is the right way to address our healthcare crisis. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan is the chief co-sponsor of the bill, and the 80,000 member strong California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee supports this bill and is actively working to encourage its passage. Nurses know that veterans deserve healthcare and that they do not always get that care.

Still, in spite of how his nation is treating him, Michael said, “Thank you for letting me share.”

Isn’t it we who should be thanking him?

I will protest for him in San Francisco tomorrow, June 19th, at noon, 4th and Howard. It’s time to tell the private insurance companies that Michael is a patient not a profit, Michael is a veteran not a bottom line, Michael is a hero not a revenue liability. I will thank him by standing up for him as he stood for me.

To see all the venues for protest of the private health insurance industry, check out:

http://www.healthcare-now.org/june19.html

Tell your story, participate in our blog and find out more at:

http://www.guaranteedhealthcare.org/node/add/user-story

You may also learn more and get more involved at americanpatientsunited.org.

Labels: CNA/NNOC veterans healthcare private health insurance healthcare denials SICKO Donna Smith AHIP protest

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Cindy Sheehan and SiCKO Sisters Donna Smith & Reggie Cervantes Unite

By Donna Smith, American SiCKO

"Building a New World"
First Summit of the World Prout Assembly
Seminar entitled: Revolution

Left to right, Donna Smith, Cindy Sheehan and Reggie Cervantes together before Cindy delivered her keynote address for a conference session held at Radford University last weekend. Donna and Reggie, both American SiCKOs, participated in the conference as panelists, and Donna keynoted the health care section for activists gathered from throughout the U.S. and beyond. Hundreds attended the event. (Photo by Reggie Cervantes)

Remarks delivered by American SiCKO Donna Smith:

RADFORD, VA — Wow, to be here with Cindy Sheehan, the woman with whom I have shared so much in cyberspace as we both appeared on Michael Moore's website over the months but never met face-to-face. Cindy, I am so sorry for the loss of Casey. But I am also so joyful for you as you welcome Jonah, your first grandchild. And I am grateful to you for your continued heroism on my behalf and on behalf of all American mothers and sons, fathers and daughters. Blessings to you and thank you for being here. And may you be elected to Congress as a new co-sponsor for HR676, the National Health Insurance Act.

My fellow revolutionaries, I bring you glad tidings from your fellow citizens. Over the past nine months, I have visited 27 states and the District of Columbia spreading the single payer, universal health care message. And I can tell you without doubt the revolution has begun.

In some places, there are seedlings popping gently but with determination toward change: in South Dakota, in Mississippi, in West Virginia, in North Carolina and in DC, and even in Dick Cheney's Wyoming.

In other places, saplings are more steady and and beginning to bare witness that will soon hold the steady branches of real change: in Indiana, Pennsylvania, California, Washington state, Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama -- even Utah and Colorado, New York and Maryland. Add Florida and Katrina-ravaged Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina and Massachusetts. Delaware, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, and now in Virginia.

These people of the revolution gather and they speak and they plan -- the next action, the next protest -- the real stuff of people on a mission. And they look to us to help provide the passion and the fuel necessary to inspire them onward. The noise of discontent must blossom and mature. And to the extent that each of us here -- engines of revolution in thought, in action and in art -- inspire and conspire with one another and all of our fellow citizens, the revolution will come.

Are there any other Phi Betta kappa members in the room today? Were you taught the "secret' handshake the revolutionary and pre-presidential Thomas Jefferson and the other founding members used to safely identify one another? I was. And with that lesson came my knowledge that this nation was and is still most assuredly subject to conditions that require, that compel, that demand not secrecy so much as loyalty to one another as revolutionaries and to the causes for which we would still die.

For me, that cause is the basic human right of health care for all. And make no mistake. I am a patriot in the most sincere and revolutionary traditions of my foremothers and forefathers.

On November 19, 1864 (and I have an affinity for that date since November 19th is my own birthday), Abraham Lincoln said, "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers set forth upon this continent a new nation -- conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

I am holding him to that promise and to that truth. I am holding you to that promise, and I am holding my nation to that higher purpose that uplifts and empowers us all and all people of the world.

Code word for the new revolution? RADFORD. Onward, my friends to the revolution. Thank you.

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